NYT Cooking now has an AI assistant that rewrites recipes around what’s actually in your fridge. The Verge AI tested it for a few days. It rescued a weeknight chicken dinner and nearly cut the butter in a cake by half. The feature is only for subscribers on iOS for now. It sits right on the recipe page, and the original recipe stays as it is because the assistant writes a new version for you.
What stands out here is the training data. According to The Verge AI, the assistant learned from NYT Cooking’s reader comments, which are full of tested fixes. Now you can get those answers at 7PM without reading through hundreds of comments.
⚡ Quick Start
What you’ll learn: How to turn a tested NYT Cooking recipe into a version that fits your ingredients, your diners and your equipment.
What you need:
- An NYT Cooking subscription
- The iOS app (that’s the only place it works at launch)
- A recipe saved or open, plus a rough idea of what’s in your kitchen
🍳 Step-by-Step
- Open a recipe and find the assistant box. You’ll see a small text box on the recipe page that says “Customize this recipe…” Why it matters: You stay inside the app, so you don’t have to bounce over to Google halfway through cooking.
- Ask a simple or a stacked question. It can be as basic as “What can I substitute for this ingredient?” or as layered as “Scale this recipe to feed seven people, and make it vegan and gluten-free.” The NYT says it can also suggest swaps for cooking equipment and convert measurements. Why it matters: One request can handle several changes at the same time.
- List what you have and what you’re missing. The reviewer pulled up a One-Pot Chicken and Rice With Ginger and typed: “I have chicken tenders, fresh ginger, garlic, rice, broth, limes, but no chard or cilantro or scallions. I do have green beans and red onions.” Within seconds she had “One-Pot Chicken and Rice With Ginger and Green Beans.” It shortened the browning time for the tenders, cooked the onion with the chicken and steamed the green beans on top of the rice for the last eight minutes. Why it matters: Specific inputs get you specific changes to timing and technique, not just a list of ingredient swaps.
- Review the “Your Version” tab. Every change shows up highlighted, and you can flip back to the original whenever you want. Why it matters: You can check the AI’s edits line by line before anything hits the pan.
- Follow up on anything it skipped. The assistant called cilantro optional and didn’t replace it. She asked about Thai basil, and it said yes and explained how the flavor would change. Why it matters: The first answer isn’t always complete, so ask follow-ups.
- Ask for ideas when you don’t know what would work. For a Thai red curry with no makrut lime leaf, it suggested grated lime zest but warned that “it misses the deeper floral, herbal aroma.” Why it matters: You get the swap along with an honest note about what you lose.
- Run your own swaps past it. She asked whether half-and-half could replace cream in a caramel apple Dutch baby, and whether Castelvetrano olives and smoked paprika could stand in for kalamata and chile pepper in a roasted halibut. Why it matters: Spice swaps are risky. A quick check beats ruining dinner.
- Convert measurements. She had the app convert the Dutch baby recipe’s metric weights. This option has been in the app for a couple of years. Why it matters: It saves you doing grams-to-cups math in your head.
⚠️ Warnings and Best Practices
- Check quantities in baking. The assistant nearly had the reviewer use half the butter her cake needed. Small ratio mistakes ruin baked goods.
- It pushes back on bad ideas. Editors say it’s trained to refuse requests that will taste bad, and The Verge AI’s attempts to get it to agree to crazy requests failed.
- Expect drift from the original. The rewritten chicken dish was very different from Yasmin Fahr’s recipe. Purists have a point, but the result beat winging it with swaps from the comments.
🔭 Next Steps
- Run your saved Recipe Box favorites through the assistant before you shop, so you buy less.
- Use it for scaling and dietary changes when you’ve got guests coming.
- Use the same process with other kitchen AI tools like Alexa Plus or Samsung Food: give it specific inputs, review the changes and double-check the numbers.
This is a smart use of AI because it adapts human-tested recipes instead of inventing new ones from scratch, and AI-only recipes still tend to disappoint. Expect more publishers with big archives to try the same thing. The Verge AI has the full hands-on review.